The Thing in the Dark

"Do you have any last words," a man said in a resounding voice. His blue eyes were as cold as ice. His eyes narrowed, and his brow furrowed. He wore the uniform of a well-dressed guardsman. He had dark hair and tan skin. He was of a lean but muscular build.

"Eat shit and die," another man replied. He was strapped to a chair with an IV in his arm. He was of a thin and lanky build with Dark Circles under his eyes and a perpetual scowl. His skin was dirty and oily.

The man in uniform growled.

"Hurry up, I don't have all day," the man in the chair howled.

"Prisoner 136164, you have been sentenced to death for your crimes against the Kingdom of Ahes, its people, and the king. For the crimes of larceny, blackmail, kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder of a member of the royal family. You will die by poisonous injection," the man said, "I hope the Goddess has no mercy on your soul. You are a monster worthy of the deepest darkest pit of the underworld. Go there and rot!" The uniformed man said.

"Stop wasting my time and do it already!" The prisoner yelled.

"Very well," the uniformed man said, "I hope you suffer. Do it!" He shouted, pointing at a nearby man in a lab coat.

The man in the lab coat connected a syringe to the IV and began to inject it into the solution.

"Kiss my ass, this entire country is rotten. Your no better than me, fuck the king, the queen, and its people, I hope this entire kingdom falls, collapses and descends into absolute chaos, bloody fucking chaos!" the prisoner began to laugh, but as he laughed, he began to cough.

Slowly, his skin began to turn bright red, his eyes turned red, and blood began to pour from his eyes. His body began to shake violently, and veins and blood vessels began to pop up on his hands, neck, and forehead.

As he laughed louder and louder between the coughs as blood spewed from his mouth until his eyes caught the sight of a figure through the window of the viewing room.

In the viewing room were those he had directly and indirectly harmed, the nobility, rich merchants, gentry, and the royal family. He didn't care, he laughed and sneered at them, he hated them, hated their smugness, hated the abuse they had poured upon him, how they used and abused him, then tossed him away when he was no longer needed.

However.

The sight of that person caused a baser instinct that he had not known for a long time to well up.

He went silent, and for the first time in his entire life, he felt too scared to move, too scared to say a thing, or let alone hurl insults. That figure he saw was too far away to see clearly, too obscured in shadow. Yet all the same caused him to completely drop his indifferent and haughty persona. That figure stood leaning against the wall.

The prisoner could not make out its face, but he felt their eyes narrow on him as staring directly through his entire being, piercing his heart and soul.

Reflected in his eyes, the condemned man saw something other worldly, something unnatural, dark, and foreboding, eerie and unnerving. It sent a chill down his spine, lightning through his dying body, and caused him to burn up inside. For a single eternal moment, nothing mattered. He could not see it, but he knew whoever, whatever that thing was, it was, or rather is something terrifyingly dark and sinister. It made him want to break free of his restraints and, with his dying breath, pledge undying loyalty to it, or to beg and plead for mercy; to be spared of this unknowable fear.

The moment passed, and with a strained breath, the light left the prisoner's eyes.